Electioneering

The NRA Has Aired 1 in 6 of All Pro-Trump TV Ads. A NRA ad for Donald Trump National Rifle Association As more Republicans abandon their support for Donald Trump, the National Rifle Association has launched a more than $22 million ad blitz to help elect him and defeat Hillary Clinton.

As reported by the Center for Public Integrity, the gun lobby is responsible for 16 percent of all pro-Trump television ads aired during this election cycle. The NRA ads mostly target residents in the swing states of Ohio, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and and are tailored to court women—a demographic that's expected to largely vote against Trump. According to CPI, the NRA has been behind about 1 of every 8 presidential TV ads aired in Ohio in October.
Can the Club for Growth Survive Donald Trump?
Last year, back when polls favorable to Donald Trump were still being dismissed and skittish GOP candidates shied from confronting the blustery mogul, one group took him on directly.

The Club for Growth, the deep-pocketed interest group that is feared by Republicans who come into its cross hairs for supporting tax or spending hikes, began running ads decrying Trump’s lack of conservative bona fides. “There’s nothing conservative about supporting socialized single-payer health care,” intoned a typical TV spot. “There’s nothing conservative about giving money to the Clintons. There’s nothing conservative about Donald Trump.” Story Continued Below But in seeking to destroy Trump’s mystique, the Club only damaged its own—badly.

Trump gave no indication he was intimidated by a group that over the previous decade had earned a reputation for burying Republicans it considered ideologically impure. Indeed, the Club has been unusually vexed by Trump this election season. Results were mixed.
Emboldened by Protests, Black Lives Matter Activists Move From Street to Ballot. The Fall of the Heritage Foundation and the Death of Republican Ideas. During the 1980 election, an up-and-coming Washington think tank called the Heritage Foundation undertook a massive task: to examine the federal government from top to bottom and produce a detailed, practical conservative policy vision.

The result, called Mandate for Leadership, epitomized the intellectual ambition of the then-rising conservative movement. Its 20 volumes, totaling more than 3,000 pages, included such proposals as income-tax cuts, inner-city “enterprise zones,” a presidential line-item veto, and a new Air Force bomber. Despite the publication's academic prose and mind-boggling level of detail, it caused a sensation. A condensed version -- still more than 1,000 pages -- became a paperback bestseller in Washington.

The newly elected Ronald Reagan passed out copies at his first Cabinet meeting, and it quickly became his administration’s blueprint.
The Fall of the Heritage Foundation and the Death of Republican Ideas. Heritage Foundation's Michael Needham Tears Apart Right Wing. Sorting through the wreckage, Washington conservatives can barely contain their anger at Needham for his ideological inflexibility and aggressive, zero-sum tactics.

“Their strategic sense isn’t very strong,” griped a prominent Republican lobbyist. “They’ve repeatedly been wrong about how to handle this.” Says a senior House Republican aide, “Mike Needham played a large role in defeating ideas that would have worked out better.”
Ibtimes. As with same-sex marriage, the war in Iraq and the Keystone XL pipeline, Hillary Clinton’s thinking on the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- a proposed trade agreement that would link the United States and 11 Pacific Rim countries -- has evolved.

Clinton revealed her opposition to the TPP just days after negotiators announced they had reached an agreement. But until now, the former U.S. secretary of state and presidential candidate declined to share her stance on the deal, which critics call “NAFTA on steroids.” Her new position reflects two closely-related anxieties in Clintonland: a lack of enthusiasm for her campaign from trade-wary and powerful corners of the labor movement as well as the unexpected success of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ insurgent challenge. Opposition to free trade deals is a pillar among many private-sector union members, in addition to unorganized workers, especially in manufacturing.
Conservative group to unveil ‘major’ ad campaign after courting donors to tak...

Marco Rubio, left, (Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press) and former Florida governor Jeb Bush. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press) The staunch fiscal conservative organization Club for Growth, under new leadership since the 2014 elections, announced it would bundle money for five GOP presidential contenders. The bigger surprises are Rubio and Bush, neither of which has embraced the doctrinaire brand of conservative for which CFG has been known. For Rubio, CFG is nevertheless surprisingly reasonable in its support for his tax policy proposals despite Rubio’s insistence on providing a generous tax credit for middle-class families rather than drive down the top marginal rate below 30 percent.

On one level, it is not surprising that CFG selected Bush, whose tax-cutting and education, entitlement and budget reform record as governor was among the strongest in the country. Rubio and Bush, along with Ohio Gov.